


i say we go this road tonight

by asexuelf



Category: Sally Face (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Butch Character, Canon Gay Character(s), Cowboy Hats, Cowboy Sal Fisher, Fluff and Humor, Gay Rights, Humor, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Is this crack?, Love at First Sight, M/M, Neopronouns, Pre-Relationship, can i make it any more obvious~ 🎶, dawn returns, is insta-love a tag, sal is a cowboy. travis is a gnc metal singer., they are so stupid, this could really work as a big ass fic tbh but maybe some other time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:19:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22370149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asexuelf/pseuds/asexuelf
Summary: Larry and his band have a gig, meaning Sal gets to go and see them play. Really, though, he's more excited for the opening act.
Relationships: Ashley Campbell/Original Character(s), Sal Fisher/Travis Phelps
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	i say we go this road tonight

**Author's Note:**

> listen whenever i post fics at this time they always suffer for it but L I S T E N i wrote this dumbass gay shit and if i dont share it i will DIE you hear me i will DIE
> 
> COWBOY SAL. BAND AU. GAY RIGHTS. i closed my eyes and pointed to random things on a page for a writing exercise and that's what i got and holy shit. talk about big brain. this was mostly not taken very seriously, so its just endless shmoop and gay and COWBOY SAL.
> 
> cowboy sal is based off that one cowboy sal au. you know the one. the one on tumblr where he calls travis darlin' from the one artist. YEAH YOU KNOW [THE ONE.](https://sally-faced.tumblr.com/post/183362385621/cursed-comic-i-made-with-country-sal)
> 
> sorry in advance for the shitty lyrics i wrote for travis' band akdnskdkskd i didnt wanna just take a song and throw it in so i put some shit together WARNING FOR HOMOPHOBIA AND IMPLIED MURDER IN THE SONG-
> 
> ANWAYS,, I HOPE YA'LL ENJOY!! 💖

Despite what his city friends sometimes seem to think, Sal Fisher isn't wholly uncultured. He's just cultured only a little bit on a variety of topics so broad he hardly remembers them all.

"I can't _believe_ you've never heard Cannibal's Son." Eyes as wide as a fish's, Larry flops backwards onto his bed. "I mean, I can, because you're a hick, but still. How have I not made you listen to them yet?"

"I don't rightly know, Larry."

"I can't let you walk out of here in good conscience until you've heard one of their songs. In fact…"

Larry leaps from his bed as quickly as he'd fallen on it, immediately making way to his shelf of recorded music. Sal watches helplessly as his brother stromps over to the fancy stereo, his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. There goes Larry Johnson-Fisher, getting carried away again!

"Won't I just be hearin' 'em next Saturday when they open for ya'll anyhow? What'sa point in listenin' now?"

"The _point_ , my cowbrother, is that this track I'm about to play for you is fucking incredible. You need to hear it now. Trust me."

With a sigh, Sal adjusts his hat and moseys on over to the radio. Larry, surprisingly, isn't messing with a vinyl record or a burnt CD. He's got a box of tapes in his hands and he's fiddling through it in search of whatever thing Sal just _has_ to hear.

"You _sure_ you don't know Cannibal's Son?"

"Don't ring a bell."

Larry sighs and shakes his head. "I have failed you, Sally Face. But that ends tonight!"

He finally fishes out a pink tape. _Pink_. When he holds it up triumphantly, it sparkles in the light.

"Not your usual scene," Sal says.

"Wait for it man. This is their first song ever and it's fucking awesome."

Sal raises an eyebrow beneath his prosthetic, but shoots Larry a thumbs-up so he knows he's listening. As the music begins to play though, his confidence weans. This is poppy as hell! The sounds are electric and bubbly - and granted, quite pleasing to the ear - but this isn't at all like Larry's usual-

Oh. _Oh, wow_.

A guitar riff as mighty as Oden's Blood and as miserable as Everyone Dies All The Time suddenly rings out, slashing through the gentle pop hit. The pop goes nowhere - and neither does the metal.

Sal is shocked. The sounds don't clash at all, only charge forward into an incredible, emotional hit. Sal's heart beats double time when the head vocalist suddenly starts shouting saccharine venom.

_Some grand oracle you were_

_Reading omens from the blood stuck to the wall_

_Soon you'll be reading six feet of fucking dirt_

_Prophecized by my teeth in your thick ass skull_

Sal isn't normally the type, but something about that voice just resonates through his bones. It's so rich and so low, brought high by sudden operatic sounds, discordant and shocking and gorgeous. He can't imagine what the person crooning and growling looks like, but one thing's for certain - they're a looker. 

And a fighter too. The lyrics are raw and steeped in pain, spoken so honestly that Sal can feel his own chest ache in sympathy for the singer's plight.

The story continues, a tale of a controlling, abusive father and an angry child tired of suffering under the thumb of a zealot. The father catches the child in bed with another boy ( _call me a funny faggot / hot and bubbling for his touch-_ ) and, after a violent altercation with the boy, forced the child through conversation therapy ( _and may jesus forgive you for the son that you hung / this was always my cross to bare / let the man bleed while the whore rises thrice nightly_ _/ I have died but I have not been killed_ -) leading into the son biding his time until he can take his revenge - his freedom! - through blood. He's saying how good it will feel when he finally-

And then the song is over. It ends so suddenly, he first assumes Larry's stereo has broken or the tape had been cut. But no - there's about fifteen seconds of static, then the tape ends and is spat out.

"Holy shit," says Sal.

"I know." The look on Larry's face is bright and passionate in the way only art or arson can ever make it. "I cannot believe they're opening for us. We get to see Cannibal's Son live - _because they're opening for my wannabe fucking garage band._ Holy shit."

Sal laughs. Excitement bubbles up in him the more Larry's eyes light up. "I think ya'll are equal in ability. I'm excited to hear them live, though."

"...You wanna listen to their newest album right now?"

"You know I do."

~

Travis Phelps, a rockstar.

Even he's shocked.

The hustle and bustle of backstage is all around him, familiar and disconcerting all at once, and he loves it. Something like anticipation hangs in his gut, heavy as an executioner's axe and as light as a rising sun. 

_How the fuck did I get here?_ he asks himself - and not for the first time. Each time they play live, each time he sees someone buying a tape or a vinyl or a _shirt_ with his band's logo on it, he asks it again.

One day he's sitting around in his friend's garage wailing 70s hits into a hairbrush. The next, he's being told Phillip recorded it - and that people wanted more. Suddenly he's getting ready to go on stage and open for one of the quickest-rising names in Nockfell's local scene - _Spectres and Starships_.

It's unreal. Spectres and Starships fucking rules! Obviously inspired by bands like Sanity's Fall, but with enough of their own creative sound that Travis knows they're going to be around for a while.

He feels like he's lost in the mall. How this ever became his life he has no idea, but he's grateful.

He hears the familiar approach of combat boots and turns his head just in time for his bandmate and best friend Dawn to sling hir arm around his shoulder. Hir denim jacket gets caught on one of the spikes on his pink leather vest and he scoffs, pushing hir away.

"What's your deal?" ze asks. Ze's smiling, eyes warm and shining with excitement. "Gotta shit? Or just starstruck?"

Travis smiles crookedly. "Maybe a little starstruck. I mean, I _am_ standing next to Cannibal's Son's worst drummer."

"Oh, fuck you." 

The smile doesn't leave hir face for a second. Ze steps away, crossing hir arms over hir white tank top, covering the words _'i love trans dykes'_. The shirt is old and faded, but Travis still loves it. It was one of their first DIY projects out of highschool; it makes him wish he'd worn his own.

Alas, the lead singer of Cannibal's Son has a _look_. To keep people from really giving him issues as an openly queer metalist (or- pop artist? He still isn't sure what the fuck their sound is called.), he keeps his face covered and his name out of the press as much as he can. Which means the character he plays is more important onstage than he is.

All pink leather, gold glitter, black ink, and fake blood, Dawn calls his look _death to kawaii_ , but he's pretty sure that's not proper Japanese.

"Seriously, you okay over here?" Dawn is waving hir hand in his face. "Babe, you totally zoned out."

"Shit, yeah, I'm okay. I just can't stop thinking… This is all so crazy."

Dawn opens hir mouth again, no doubt telling him something either rude or inspiring or both, but he can't hear hir. This time, it's not his thoughts that are keeping him distracted: it's… _them._

The air leaves him like he's been punched.

"Please, _please,_ tell me that person's a man. I will not cope well if they aren't."

Looking slightly insulted, Dawn turns, eyebrow raised and mouth set in a line. When hir eyes find the object of Travis' sudden desire, they roll.

"Yes, he's a dude." _Fuck yes!_ "He's the stepbrother of the Spectres guy. Hangs out with Ash, like, all the time."

"He knows your girlfriend?"

"Ash is _in_ Spectres and Starships, dumbass!"

How can he be expected to remember something like that when the man of his dreams has just come waltzing in? Oh, how those bright blue braided pigtails peek coyly out from under that dark cowboy hat! How handsomely that red plaid shirt tucks snuggly into those dark jeans, buttoned so smartly under a similarly dark jean vest. The vest says _YOU ARE NOT ALONE_ along the back in white paint, a testament of love for every stranger he comes across. And the boots…

Travis could write a whole album about those boots. A fucking rock opera. 

"He's just the way I like them," he whispers. As if it's some kind of secret that he has a type.

All of his past boyfriends (not that there are many) have been cut from a… similar vein. Round, punk, and more than happy to say _fuck you_ to gender roles.

Dawn rolls hir eyes again. "Well, it's your lucky day _pardner_ , cuz he's coming right over."

"Oh, God."

~

 _You can do this,_ Sal tells himself. _You can do this, you can do this, you can do this. Just like you practiced!_

 _And,_ he adds. _You won't punish yourself if he's not interested!_

That last bit is easily one of his worst habits. He finds a belle or beau or other beauty and suddenly he's falling into a six-foot pit of guilt. It's an awful way to go about things, but with his looks and his experiences, it's about all he can do not to actually start digging himself a grave.

He stops before the beauty of the hour - a nameless, faceless person, who he nonetheless has fallen for. Those hypnotizing brown eyes look at him over an adorable sick mask, that shock of bleach-blond hair sticking out from under a devil-horned headband and veil. His eyes are so kind, just like in the interviews Sal's been binging.

"Howdy," he says, like he practiced.

"Howdy," his beau flirts back. He tilts his head and bats his eyelashes. "What can I do for you, cowboy?"

Sal's face grows hot as Hades under his prosthetic. He thinks his beau can see it somehow, in his ears and through the holes of his mask, because those pretty brown eyes crinkle around the edges.

"W-Well, I hope you don't find me impolite, but I've been following your work recently - the music and the activism and all - and I've come to think of you as quite the catch. So, that's been gettin' me wonderin' if maybe, after the show or after you get your beauty rest, you might be interested in takin' a more-than-friendly trip to Addison's Tea with me."

A moment passes between them where his beau just blinks. The red-headed butch beside him looks ready to either burst into laughter or run in the other direction.

"I'll buy," Sal says awkwardly.

Then, a miracle - the beau smiles again. Even under the mask, Sal can tell it's a truly radiant smile - one to rival even the brightest of Friday night light.

"You're asking me out?" And isn't that giddy tone just as musical as anything else he's ever made?

"I- Uh," Sal swallows. "Yep. Sorry fer skippin' a few steps. I didn't wanna waste time and lose my chance with someone like you."

The beauty's grin only grows. "I'm not a big fan of all that anyways. It's better to get to the important stuff, right? And it'll give us more to chat about over tea."

"Yes, sir! You and I think alike!" He's pretty sure he's melting right into his boots. Soon he'll be nothin' but snakeskin and ceramic and a jar worth of goo! "Well, I-I'll be seein' ya, then. I gotta help fix things up for the show if I'm gonna stay and watch."

"You're helping us set up? That's so nice!"

"Yep. I do every time Larry does a live gig." He flexes, laughing. "Let's just say it ain't my first rodeo!"

The blond laughs, sounding breathless as his fingers twirl in his light pink, black-stained skirt. His friend looks awkward, beginning to slowly edge away.

"Cool," breathes his beau. "That's really cool. Oh, uh, if you can't find me after the show, here-" He breaks out a pen. "This is my number. If someone else picks up, just ask for Travis. That's- um. That's my name."

"Travis…" Oh, what a coveted thing! Sal wants to say it for the rest of his life. Just in case, he takes the pen and starts writing his own digits above Travis' glove. "My name is Sal, but you can call me anytime."

Travis bursts into feverish-sounding giggles.

"Oh, good lord. And they say lesbians move fast!" His friend turns, their arms thrown into the air as they walk away, shouting behind them, "I'm outta here!"

They meet eyes and begin to laugh.

Travis turns and shouts back, "Okay! Later, Dawn!" Then he faces Sal again, tugging his cute fishnet back into place. "Um, see you soon."

"Soon as possible, darlin'. I'll be watchin' you play."

It's hard to wink, but Travis is so tall in those platform boots, he knows he can see into the eyeholes of his prosthetic - so he does, hoping it looks rogueish instead of stupid. Judging by the suddenly charmed look in his beauty's eyes, he succeeds.

Then, he turns and moseys towards the stage, feeling more confident than he has in ages. His brother and beau are gonna rock the crowd tonight - then, later, he'll have Terrance whip them up something special.

Yep. Everythang's comin' up Sally Face.

**Author's Note:**

> THANK YOU FOR READING!! 💖 i'm considering writing more for the au ngl it's just so [shakes fist] swaggalicious
> 
> dont be afraid to drop a comment and tell me how ya feel!


End file.
